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Putting Aside Beliefs

Submitted by Stephen Winters

For many years I have been taught and told how important having the "right beliefs". For years I accepted that premise without questioning it. I even went as far as to try to define what my beliefs were. Toward that end I even did a lot of thinking and writing to try to put together something that I could use to be better define what I "believe" about .... All of that was put into this article: Contrasting Traditional Christianity With One Person's Reality. However, while I received a great sense of near accomplishment as I was getting closer to completion, I felt that there was something missing. The more I thought about it the more it seemed that defining beliefs was not the path I needed to be on. I've seen my thoughts and "beliefs" change many times over the years. A belief, any belief, seems to be stagnant, not moving or growing.

With time I began to refocus from "What do I belief" or even "what is the correct belief" (about anything) to "What is true?" (about anything, be it God or created things.)

As I think more about it, Beliefs (nor Faith) should not be the major guiding force in our journey in this life. More about that later.......

It seems to me that there are at least two aspects of faith. The one that I've seen to a great degree in Christianity is that of making a decision to have faith in a doctrine, idea, or creed. This type of faith "believe not what is seen, but what is unseen." In other words, there doesn't need to be any evidence or proof. It's kind of like having faith in faith. "Just have faith and believe."